The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

by Samuel Noah Kramer

give my heartfelt thanks for my first fellowship, which enabled me to go to Iraq in 1929-30. To the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the American Philosophical Society, I wish to stress, as I have in other writings, the very special debt I owe; they were "friends in need" during a crucial period in my scholarly career. And this is a fitting opportunity to mention my debt to William Foxwell Albright, who spoke warmly of my researches-still in their early stages-to the American Philosophical Society, although he and I had then never met. In recent years, the Bollingen Foundation has been most generous with a series of fellowships which have enabled me to obtain at least a minimum of scientific and clerical assistance. The Barth Foundation, too, was of some help in this respect; it provided a grant which enabled me to work for a time in the Hilprecht Collection of the Friedrich-Schiller University. Let me close by expressing my thanks to my former assistant, Edmund Gordon, whose excellent researches in Sumerian wisdom literature were available to me before and during their publication, and to Miguel Civil, my former assistant, who made available to me his researches in Sumerian lexicography, medicine, and technology. Jane Heimerdinger, a research assistant in the University Museum, prepared the Index and helped in numerous